a view from the porch in Book Two

15% of suffering is uninvited sickness and disaster. The rest we bring on ourselves.

That is a line from a book I am reading. The line jumped out at me as a little nugget of wisdom after a scene involving a large barking dog, an escaped convict with a gun, a scuffle in the kitchen, a dark night and a run down house… The line was referring to the sister of the convict and the bad choices she made and would likely continue to make. Some people you just cannot help.

d-_-b

Yesterday I was talking about rules and society. Essentially I said that if we all behaved a little more responsibly we wouldn’t need so many rules. And then I was reminded that in Canada, we have a subtle neighbourly way of enforcing the unwritten rules. Don’t shovel your driveway? Don’t bring in your recycle boxes? Don’t cut the grass? Your neighbours will talk about you.

For the record, those things are the biggest issues in my neighbourhood. We don’t have leather vested bearded men fixing motorcycles in driveways, drinking beer, swearing and listening to 70s music. We don’t have dangerous dogs chained up in front yards. We don’t even have dandelions.

But we do have social climbers. We do have a gossip who peeks in windows and into backyards. We do have a lady who has anointed herself the judge and jury of who is in the it crowd and who is out. I haven’t been in high school for a long time, but I still remember what it was like.